‘Father,’ his voice seemed to say, ‘Father, why did you leave me?’
But the spectre passed on and Huttser shook himself from the dreadful reverie.
‘Quickly, Palla,’ he cried. ‘Make for the trees.’
‘No, Huttser. Look.’
Palla was gazing hopelessly at the tree line where the Night Hunters were already making short work of the dazed rebels.
‘To the south,’ snarled Huttser, ‘run, Palla, run for your life!’
Other rebels had turned towards the south too, away from the trees and back down the valley. Slavka was there, and Keeka and Karma. Rar and Gart too. The spectres sprang noiselessly after them through the night. The maddened rebels ran on and on, whining and howling, unaware that they were being herded like lambs for the slaughter towards the humans’ camp.
‘So,’ muttered Morgra, as she lay with her eyes closed in the fearful forest, ‘it is done.’
All around her the heavy grass was wet with cuckoo spit and the air was still and lifeless.
‘Now go, my friends, out there among the Lera. Touch them with terror and open their minds. Tempt nature to turn against itself, and in so doing bait the trap. For in hating their own lives, the only hope the Lera will look to is the Vision. Then, when their eyes turn as one to me, I shall have them.’
The eerie howling rose again and the spectres chasing the rebels towards the human camp turned in the night. The rebels did not see them as they turned, for they were too frightened to look behind them, but as the spectres went and the terrible howling subsided, they dissolved into a hissing silver smoke that rolled out through the grass and the trees and seemed to carry a word on the wind like a sigh, and the word was death.
Like a fog it brushed the souls of the Lera, the worms and the beetles, the fox and the field mice, and a terrible fear began to spread through the Land beyond the Forest.
As the humans heard the rebels coming, heard their howls on the air and saw fifty or sixty wolves emerging at the neck of the valley, the largest pack they had ever known, they too thought that their nightmares had come alive. A great shout went up as they rushed for their swords and their spears, their shields and their cross bows.
Like the wolf they were driven by instinct now, but in their hands and their minds they held a different power.
Arrows flew through the air and felled many of the running wolves before they even reached their fires. But as the other wolves came on, glad at least to find an enemy that they could touch with tooth and claw, the night came alive with flashing swords and with the cries of man and beast mingling in the awful blackness.
‘Dive down,’ cried Larka.
Like a thunderbolt, the eagle fell through the air.
‘What is happening, Skart?’ cried Larka as they swooped.
‘Morgra,’ answered the eagle, trembling like a feather, ‘and Wolfbane. They have used the ancient howl to call to the Searchers. The Pathways of Death are opening. The true pathways of the past.’
‘Hurry, Skart, we must find my parents.’
The eagle opened his brown wings even wider and, with a shriek, turned in the air as dawn began to crack around them.
Larka’s heart sank as Skart plunged towards the valley of Kosov. At first, the bodies on the edges of the valley were simply specks, without form or meaning. From the air they might have been stones, or fallen trees. But as the bird drew nearer on the wind and its eyes began to pick out the details of the night before, Larka gasped. Smudges of black turned blood-red. A stunted bush became a pile of dying bodies. A patch of fur, the tattered muzzle, and the sad and empty eyes of a broken wolf.
Lower and lower Skart came, skimming the valley, touching the dead with the very air that quivered below his wings, his angry eyes taking in all that sped beneath him. Everywhere, the rebels lay; on the edge of the trees, contorted into unnatural shapes, some still stirring as the life left them, others alive only in the energy that decay would return to the earth.
The scenes that met their eyes were pitiful. Here a dying she-wolf had crawled through the grass towards her already dead mate and perished before she could even reach him. There, a rebel lay, the promise and hope of the trees still seized in his lifeless eyes. But what sent a shudder through Skart were the birds. They were everywhere, plucking and pecking at the dead wolves, tearing at the rebels’ flesh and cawing delightedly as they hopped about like hooded grave robbers and pulled out their eyes.
‘Oh, Skart,’ gasped Larka, as the skies grumbled with thunder, ‘is this what the Sight is for? To show us this?’
Larka could feel Skart trembling with fury as it began to rain.
‘Morgra. She has fulfilled Wolfbane’s promise to the flying scavengers.’
‘Is there nothing,’ cried Larka bitterly, ‘nothing we can see in life that is too terrible? No horror we can see that will bring peace?’
On they sailed, and now Skart turned back down the valley. As he flew over the camp, some of the humans looked up and scowled, for they wondered as they looked about if all nature had become their enemy. Among them lay the bodies of many wolves, but here and there at their sides were human corpses, too, and their blood was mixing in the earth.
‘No,’ gasped Larka, ‘it is all coming about.’
But, though despair had won that sun, a question stirred in Larka’s mind as the eagle flew among the dead over the valley of Kosov – a question and the faintest stirrings of hope. In all the dead faces they passed, Huttser and Palla were nowhere to be seen.
It was evening when they flew again to the Gathering Place. As the sun began to set over the Carpathians, touching the clouds with a mournful fire, the Balkar packs were putting paid to the last of the rebels. Then, as it started to rain, from the trees stepped a single wolf. She walked slowly, but her tail was lifted and her eyes glittered with certainty. She stopped and, as she surveyed the carnage, she smiled.
‘This is what comes of Slavka’s Greater Pack,’ Morgra snarled, ‘of Slavka’s feeble boundaries. Balkar, can you doubt me now? Doubt the glory of the Sight or the friend of the dead? Our power is growing like a forest.’
Morgra lifted her scarred head and let out a howl. Her call rose again, higher and higher into the air, but it was no longer seeking. It was cold and triumphant, and the Balkar packs began to answer. Now, as they swayed their heads in unison, it was as though Morgra’s mind was controlling them completely.
‘Wolfbane,’ they howled. ‘The Evil One.’
As the howling subsided again Morgra swung round.
‘Hurry,’ she cried, ‘I feel Larka is near, and with her the child. We must hunt them down, while the flying scavengers find the entrance to the citadel. We are so close to the final prize.’
But as she spoke a Night Hunter stepped up and began to whisper in Morgra’s ear, and as he did so the she-wolf started to snarl furiously. Once more there was doubt and fear in her eyes.
‘Find them,’ she hissed. ‘Find them and kill them.’ Darkness came in again with the sweeping thunder clouds and the shape of those dead souls was lost to the gloom of the storm and to the night. And as Skart flew and Larka looked down, a desperate compassion stirred inside her. Not only for the rebels, but for the Balkar who had died in the fight, and for the humans, too, in their distant camp.
The drizzling rain made the scene miserable indeed, for it was soaking the grass around the rebels’ bodies, blending blood and sap and turning it to mud. The valley was dissected by little rivulets. Not the pure fresh waters of new life but streams of death that carried the wolves’ souls weeping through the grass.
As Skart looked down on Morgra and what the birds were doing to the wolves he felt a terrible anger. Before Larka could stop him, he plunged earthward. He was flapping angrily as he settled near Morgra and she snarled as soon as she saw him.
‘So, Skart,’ she cried scornfully, ‘has such a bird come to share Wolfbane’s feast too? I thought you were the true flying Putnar. Couldn’t you resist?’
r /> But even as she looked into the bird’s eyes Morgra licked her lips.
‘Larka,’ she hissed, ‘you are here too, aren’t you? So we meet properly at last.’
In that moment Larka wanted to leave the bird’s body and run, anywhere, to be a pup again and nestle in her mother’s warm flanks, or feel the strength and safety of Huttser as he stood over her.
‘Give the child to me, Larka, and together we will complete the legend. For the Pathways of Death are open and the verse is almost fulfilled. The entrance is somewhere in the mountains beyond. The entrance to the lost citadel. Harja.’ Far away, Larka began to snarl, and Tsarr and the human looked up. But now her mind was growling and she found the energy of her anger speaking through Skart.
‘Never.’
‘But we are the same you and I,’ said Morgra coldly. ‘You must have felt it, my dear. The curse of the Sight. That is what it teaches you in the end. If you look properly there is nothing but pain and darkness and death. Nothing except power.’
‘There is,’ cried Larka, ‘there is love and hope and freedom. The freedom of the birds.’
Morgra smiled as the ghastly feasting went on around them.
‘Come to me, Larka, and I shall soothe you. I shall teach you your true nature. The true nature of the wolf. For I have done this for you. To protect you.’
‘For me?’ snarled Larka. ‘Liar. No, Morgra. I will find my parents and together we shall stop you. For we are the family.’
Though Larka knew she was lying, that Fell had gone and Kar too, for a moment Morgra’s face seemed to crumple with doubt.
‘I shall fight you,’ growled Larka, ‘you and Wolfbane. Always.’
As Larka and Skart looked at Morgra’s vicious face they fancied her eyes were shielding something from them.
‘No, Larka,’ she snarled, ‘soon the legend shall carry us, Wolfbane and I, to everlasting glory.’
Larka felt a terror now, and with it came a furious hate.
‘I will stop you, Morgra. I will look into the human’s mind myself.’
Morgra could hear the snarl in Larka’s voice as she spoke through Skart.
‘That’s good, Larka,’ smiled Morgra, glaring delightedly at the bird, ‘hate me. For your hate brings you closer to me. It is natural, Larka, to hate. Like hunger. Like night. You must hate me for all I have done to your pack and your friends. Remember them. Remember the pain. Remember, Fell, dying under the beautiful stars.’
‘No. No.’
But as Larka struggled, Skart flapped his great wings, and she thought of Fell’s lost soul and she felt the hate beginning to burn in her belly. She felt it wash over her like the water that had taken Fell, and as it did so she wanted to give in to it. To be consumed by it. To turn it, like teeth, against her enemy.
‘You are barren, Morgra,’ snarled Larka. ‘That’s why you can never love.’
Now it was Morgra’s turn to seethe with pain.
‘When your parents lie dead, Larka,’ she hissed, ‘you shall no longer talk of a family to defeat the evil.’
Morgra’s jaws were grinning coldly, but she suddenly threw herself at Skart and her paw scythed the air as the screeching eagle took wing above her. Higher and higher Skart rose, and Morgra began to dwindle below them.
‘We are already searching for them,’ Morgra cried furiously, ‘as we hunt for you, and now the flying scavengers will aid us. So be ready, my dear. You talk of love. Well, we shall see. For he is waiting for you too, Larka. Wolfbane is waiting. The Evil One. Then... then I will make you fight love itself.’
‘Regroup,’ cried Slavka in the shadow of the trees banking up the mountain. The stragglers passed back the word, but even as they did so they felt a yawning anguish in their hearts. Only thirty of their number had come alive from the terrible valley, and all they had seen of the Searchers had almost broken their spirits.
‘What now?’ whispered Palla to Huttser.
Behind them trailed Keeka and Karma and Rar too. He had been wounded in the battle, as had Palla, by one of the human swords. But Palla had managed to save Slavka’s life as they fled through the human’s camp. As a soldier had raised his sword to strike Slavka down, Palla’s pounce had knocked him to the ground.
As they fled into the woods towards the high mountains in the storm, they all began to notice the Lera, and shuddered at what they saw. Among the trees they saw a snake eating its own tail. In a stream fish had floated to the surface of the water and, though they were still alive, they just lay there, as dragonflies and gnats settled on their eyes. In the trees they saw birds too, plucking the feathers from their own young. A madness seemed to have entered the Lera and, as they went, Huttser and Palla fancied they were watching them too. They shivered as they thought of the words of the verse, but they knew that the Searchers had begun to do Morgra’s bidding.
Palla lifted her head now as she saw the leader coming towards them, with Gart at her side.
‘Slavka,’ growled Huttser, as she came up. ‘What should we do? Hide in the mountains among the ancient stones?’
Above them the birds were wheeling in the skies, screeching and cawing, diving suddenly towards the forest. There were so many that their wings seemed to turn the air that held them up into waves of rolling movement.
But as soon as she saw the pair Slavka snarled. She thought of Huttser’s daughter, still out there somewhere with the human child, and anger and hatred seethed through her body.
‘Gart,’ she snapped, ‘why aren’t they under guard?’
‘But, Slavka, now that—’
‘Silence,’ cried Slavka furiously. ‘You think that because of what has happened Huttser and Palla shall go free? That they are on our side? No. Tomorrow sun it is they who shall pay for our defeat. They shall fight to the death.’
Keeka looked nervously at Karma, and Rar started to growl and shake his head. But Slavka’s eyes were flaming and already some of the remaining rebels had surrounded Huttser and Palla.
There was something else in Slavka’s anger, though. Even now, there was a voice in Slavka’s mind that seemed to be trying to control her thoughts. It had started when the spectre had touched her. As they ran, it whispered to her, whispered of another way. It promised her things, and soothed the loneliness that had for so long eaten at her soul. That same morning it had overcome her; a terrible feeling of hopelessness that made Slavka believe there were traitors everywhere. She had heard that voice, saying the same thing over and over, just as it did now. ‘Kill them. Kill them both.’
‘Slavka,’ snarled Huttser, ‘even now you are unable to see the truth. You have become no better than Morgra. But Palla and I shall never fight again. We will never turn on ourselves, as the Lera are doing.’
‘Huttser,’ whispered Slavka savagely, and it was as though all she had seen at the battle had entered her soul. ‘You shall fight. For a quick death at the teeth of the other will be a blessed release, compared to the agony that will face the victor. Or both of you, if you refuse. Hobbled in the sun, the skin around your livers torn open to be pecked at by these birds, I will make sure that death will last for a whole moon. That is why you will fight and fight to kill one another quickly.’
Some of the others looked at Slavka in horror now, but they were too dazed to oppose her will. Karma turned to Keeka and Rar, and in her eyes she held a message. But Rar shook his head. There were too few of them to help the Dragga and Drappa.
‘Gart,’ growled Slavka suddenly, ‘take them away and let them contemplate their fate. In the morning call me.’
That night as Huttser and Palla lay together, Slavka kept watching them and wondering coldly what they might be saying to one another. ‘No matter,’ she thought as she did so, ‘all their fond words can lead to nowhere but darkness and death.’ They were all around Slavka now, and as she lay there she heard that voice again, thrumming through her mind. ‘You are with us,’ it whispered coldly.
Huttser raised his head. His mind was searching for a way
to change their fate, but nothing came to the Dragga except the same terrible thought.
‘Palla,’ he said softly, ‘tomorrow. You must show me your throat.’
‘But, Huttser.’
‘I’ll make a clean kill, Palla. It will be over quickly.’
‘Has it come to this, Huttser?’ whimpered Palla bitterly.
‘Has Morgra’s curse finally won?’
‘The curse,’ Huttser snorted, ‘it is not just Morgra’s power that is doing this. The curse is in our hearts, Palla. In Slavka’s heart. In Morgra’s heart. Sometimes I think it is in all our hearts. Ours. The Balkar’s.’
‘And the rebels, too,’ growled Palla looking around her angrily.
‘Rebels,’ snarled Huttser, ‘for a time I thought Skop was right to want to help the rebel pack. But now it seems there is little to choose between Slavka and Morgra.’
Palla looked up at the stars above them peeking through the leafy canopy. The air was warm with summer, and a nightingale was singing in some distant tree. Its note had a mournful beauty, and Palla felt her heart stir with anger at what was to come. Anger at the massacre. Anger at the terrible injustice of life.
‘It’s all so wrong,’ growled Palla, lifting her beautiful muzzle to the giant night. ‘So unjust.’
‘What do you mean, Palla?’
‘My sister,’ she growled, ‘was it her fault that nature made her barren? Or that the others so feared the Sight that they drove her out? That’s what made her evil. And everything must fight to survive.’
Huttser growled, but he had no answer for his mate.
‘If there were time, Huttser, I would lead a revolt. Such a revolt that all the Lera would remember it, for ever. A revolt against the sun and the moon and the stars. A revolt against Tor and Fenris themselves.’
Huttser whimpered, but the wolf had nothing to console his mate.
‘I wonder where they are,’ said Palla suddenly, gazing wistfully into the darkness. ‘What would they think if they saw what we have to do? Would Larka just be frightened away again?’